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PICS: Planetary Nebulae in Cosmological Simulations – Revelations of the Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function from Realistic Stellar Populations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2025

Lucas M. Valenzuela Open the ORCID record for Lucas M. Valenzuela [Opens in a new window] ,
Rhea-Silvia Remus ,
Marcelo M. Miller Bertolami  and
Roberto H. Méndez
Lucas M. Valenzuela*
Affiliation:
Universitäts-Sternwarte, Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Scheinerstr. 1, 81679 München, Germany
Rhea-Silvia Remus
Affiliation:
Universitäts-Sternwarte, Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Scheinerstr. 1, 81679 München, Germany
Marcelo M. Miller Bertolami
Affiliation:
Instituto de Astrofísica de La Plata, UNLP-CONICET, La Plata, Paseo del Bosque s/n, B1900FWA, Argentina Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas, UNLP, La Plata, Paseo del Bosque s/n, B1900FWA, Argentina
Roberto H. Méndez
Affiliation:
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
*
email: lval@usm.lmu.de
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Abstract

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Even after decades of usage as an extragalactic standard candle, the universal bright end of the planetary nebula luminosity function (PNLF) still lacks a solid theoretical explanation. Until now, models have modeled planetary nebulae (PNe) from artificial stellar populations, without an underlying cosmological star formation history. We present PICS (PNe In Cosmological Simulations), a novel method of modeling PNe in cosmological simulations, through which PN populations for the first time naturally occur within galaxies of diverse evolutionary pathways. We find that only by using realistic stellar populations and their metallicities is it possible to reproduce the bright end of the PNLF for all galaxy types. In particular, the dependence of stellar lifetimes on metallicity has to be accounted for to produce bright PNe in metal-rich populations. Finally, PICS reproduces the statistically complete part of the PNLF observed around the Sun, down to six orders of magnitude below the bright end.

Keywords

galaxies: distances and redshiftsgalaxies: stellar contentplanetary nebulae: generalstars: AGB and post-AGBstars: evolutionstars: luminosity functionmass function

Information

Type
Contributed Paper
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 19 , Symposium S384: Planetary Nebulae: A Universal Toolbox in the Era of Precision Astrophysics , December 2023 , pp. 69 - 75
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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Astronomical Union

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